


Collige, Virgō, Rosās

by Arianne, jonphaedrus, patrexes



Series: Novæ Bonus Res [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Canon Consensual Incestuous Relationship, Canon Disabled Character, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Epistolary, F/F, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Lingua Latīna | Latin, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Metafiction, Multi, Power Imbalance, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 07:51:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19313836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arianne/pseuds/Arianne, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrexes/pseuds/patrexes
Summary: Alisaie pyr Leveilleur whispered a prayer to the Twelve for patience.





	Collige, Virgō, Rosās

**Author's Note:**

> From _The Essential van Hydrus and Pseudepigrapha, with Translation and Commentary, Vol. I_ , edited by Nendu Vanu:
> 
> _Collige, virgō, rosās_ (“O virgin, gather roses”) is among the earliest surviving works attested to the name Regula van Hydrus. The date of its composition is not recorded, but traditionally it is dated c. 1547 6AE.[26]
> 
> The authorship of this poem remains contested, and it is most commonly attributed to an unknown pseudo-van Hydrus, as its early date, use of the Garlean language rather than Allagan, and relatively rough metre are not consistent with the established styles of van Hydrus the Scholar or van Hydrus the Poet. Given its theme, historical scholars considered the poem unlikely to be authored by a beta, as Regula van Hydrus (1535 6AE–13 7AE) was known to be. Scholars who attribute it to the latter argue his age (fifteen years at the date of its likely composition) would account for the inconsistencies in language, and his attested lifelong relationship with the alpha Varis zos Galvus for its themes. As a fifth option, following the translation of RWG 436 In8,[27] still others claim it is the work of R. wir Galvus—itself disputed as simply the married name of Regula van Hydrus (1535 6AE–13 7AE).
> 
> The poem displays experimentation with language, theme, and metre while playing on the genre of _iuvenīlia_ , which both fetishized newly-presented omegas and shamed them for any appearance of or desire for worldliness. As in later Allagan work, van Hydrus makes ample use of double entendre—here to blend a metaphor-driven _carpe diem_ with a jocose, punning image of the rather dirtier reality of youthful desires.  
> 
> 
>   
>  _Collige, virgō, rosās dum flōs novus et nova pūbes,_   
>  _Et memor estō ævum sic properāre tuum._   
>  _Flēs, paîs, dēspērās nōdō adedis alphæ tālōs,_   
>  _Perpetere inestō eum, mox germinābis: flōrē!_   
> 
> 
>   
> O virgin, gather roses  
> while you and they are freshly bloomed,  
> Remembering eternity —  
> the span of time; its grip on you.  
> Weeping thing, you do yourself  
> no favours nipping alpha heels;  
> Pray, patience find you—you’ll be plucked  
> Once bud its flow’r in full reveals.  
> — Jehan Symaud
> 
>   
> O virgin, gather roses while the flowers and your youth are new,  
> And be mindful of time—thus it hastens you forward.  
> You weep, devotee[28], with no hope of a tie[29] nipping at alpha heels.  
> Be patient, and belong to him you shall, soon blossoming: now bloom![30]  
> — E’himly Hwel
> 
> * * *

Iunius cum patrī eius cōnsuētūdinem stuprī tōtīus vītæ. Quondam Bælsar prīncipam senātūs erat, Livia velut uxore ipsā ex aliā latere apud hunc collocābat aliā cum eōmegā eius. Rūmor āit eam vulnērabātur ā Bælsare prætextātam adhūc; Bælsarem invēnerat Imperātōre concumbēns et Galvus Bælsarem agitābat Liviæ in vitiātum.

[Livia van] Junius lived in habitual incest with her father the whole of her life. Even when Bælsar became Senator Princeps, she sat herself down at one side of him, his omega on the other, as if she was his wife. The people say she had been given a wound[31] by Bælsar while she was still unpresented; that Livia came upon Bælsar in the bed of the Emperor as if he was his concubine and [Solus zos] Galvus conducted[32] Bælsar in violating her.

* * *

— Suo sas Antonius, _De vita Lēgātorum, vol. II_ , trans. A. Pelsar.

 

 

 

On 15S, 5AM, thirty-two days following the spark of the Sharlayan Uprising of 16 (also called the 4th Umbral Moon Rebellion), by the cloak of night two imperial guards escorted Alphinaud aan Leveilleur to his family home in Idyllshire.

In the following weeks, he spoke not of the events within the Castrum, nor of his own health, and instead was concerned wholly with the maintenance of Sharlayan and her people.

For those who were worried about him, it was a difficult time.

 

 

 

When Alisaie pyr Leveilleur arrived home from Castrum Centri, it was mid-morning. She had received a call over linkpearl from her sister in the middle of the night, blind panic in her voice, and so Alisaie had begged clearance for leave as soon as she was able, and Livia let her go. She found Næl pacing the length of the living room, scales on her forearms and dark circles beneath her eyes. Her nails, scratching at her own skin as she made her paces, were curling halfway to claws. “Alisaie,” she breathed. “Thank the Mother.” The light beneath her skin faded, her eyes full of only desperate relief.

Alisaie felt bile rise in the back of her throat. _Garlemald_. She wrapped up Næl in a desperate embrace; said half-buried into her tunic, “You’ve not slept.”

“No,” Næl admitted. She glanced to Alphinaud’s closed door, and something crossed her face, an expression that Alisaie had never seen before. She looked _stricken_. “He was—” she swallowed, like she was choking down bile, rage, or both. When she at last continued, her voice was steady. Sharp. Like her teeth. “— _deposited_ upon the doorstep like so much refuse, and once we had him inside—”

“We?” Alisaie cut in, and pressed Næl into the armchair. Alisaie sat across from her, feeling as restless as Næl looked but not wanting to give her sister an excuse to be on her feet longer yet.

“Smallpox was having difficulties with her livestock,” Næl explained.[33] “She offered assistance. Alisaie, he was so weak with hunger he was unable to _stand_ of his own accord, and once he was deposited in his bed with a mug of tea, he tricked me out—bade me leave him on pretense of acquiring another quilt, and I returned to a locked door.” Her claws dug deep into the seat cushion, and tore through the fabric. “He’s not come out since.”

“He will,” said Alisaie darkly, and stood.

Alphinaud’s room stank, musk everywhere—alpha-scent, rut, _ownership_. She could smell it even though the closed door, and it tasted like a mouthful of something _rotten_.

She knocked harder than strictly necessary, swallowing back sick at the smell—when there was no response she knocked again. “Alphinaud,” she snapped. “Open the door.”

The only thing visible beneath the crack of the door was the white glow from his moonstone carbuncle, illuminating the faded line of paint that cut through the room all the way to Alisaie’s toes at the door. They had put it down when they were nine, in a Næl-abetted attempt to further establish their individualism, and were stubborn enough— _to a fault_ , to hear ~~their father~~ everyone who knew them tell it—to not so much as cross the line if it meant getting the door open or closed for the next six years.

Alisaie would bet good money Alphinaud still never crossed it, even with her side of the room lain empty.

From behind the door: “Far þú nú, þars þik hafi allan gramir!” _Go off to somewhere every fiend might have at you._

“All right then,” Alisaie muttered.

“Precisely.” Næl stood in the entry to the hall as if the smell was too much to come closer. She was glowing again, red veins of light beneath her pale skin, burning with rage—a kind of literalism to the word that had Alisaie worried for the wallpaper.

“Do you have any idea what happened?” Alisaie glanced back at her brother’s door like it would open.

(It did not.)

“No,” said Næl, in a way that meant _yes_. In a way that meant _yes, and I hate everything about it._

Alisaie shut her eyes, and she did not scream. She dug her nails into her palms so hard they drew blood, but she did not scream. “He wasn’t—” and she had to cut herself off again because if she actually said the word out loud, then she _would_ scream.

“He insists,” Næl said, voice low and dubious, “that he came to no harm. Whatever that might be taken to mean.” On the other side of the door, there was naught but silence. Næl shook her head and turned to leave, a hissed _mendāx_ barely audible under her breath. Like that was that, somehow. All that there was to do.

Alisaie stared after her, crossing her arms. Blood stained her fingernails. “You know,” she started, loud enough that both Næl and Alphinaud, had he been listening at the door, could hear her. “When I requested my leave this morning, I was informed I could only have the day, as the Legatus has requested to meet with me. Personally.”

Næl stopped in place, puffing up like a cat whose tail’d been trod on. “Fascinating,” she replied. She was not fascinated.

From within Alphinaud’s bedroom, there was a quiet, muffled _thump_ , barely audible through the door. The light from his carbuncle went dark.

“Now,” Alisaie continued, and she didn’t know anymore if her voice was shaking. She certainly was. She wanted, oddly, for her helmet, because if Næl saw her cry she didn’t know what she would do. “I’m at a loss as to why he could wish to speak to me, as is my Tribunus. And I— _desperately_ —do not want to learn of anything I should be hearing from my family from the Black Wolf.”

Alphinaud’s bedroom remained dark and silent. Næl went to the kitchen and made three mugs of tea, leaving the last before the door.

 

 

 

All Imperial Castra looked identical—or so Alisaie had thought when she first arrived at Castrum Centri, bright-eyed and hungry to see the world beyond Sharlayan even should it mean enlisting to serve its oppressors.

She had learned quite quickly that while they were all pre-fabricated, meant to be assembled by soldiers with as little training in as little time as possible, they were living, functioning things that hardly remained as initially designed. Castrum Centri—then still known to some as Castrum Novum—had undergone renovations for over a decade, in the course of which it had been transformed into a labyrinthine puzzle. Alisaie had been stationed there all her nearly three years of service, and occasionally even she still found herself relying on maps to navigate areas outside of her standard assignments. If there was some _practical_ reason for its renovations under the command of Livia tol Junius, Alisaie did not know it. She suspected Livia simply relished making her soldiers sweat.

Castrum Meridianum was nothing like that.

To hear Livia tell it, Meridianum’s design was Nero nan Scæva’s crowning achievement.

(To hear Livia tell it, it was in fact his _only_ achievement.)

It was fully double the groundspace of Centri, housing nearly a third of the Garlean military on Eorzean soil, from both the XIVth and what little of Næl’s culled VIIth yet remained. The Prætorium within had shielding capable of deflecting a Dreadnought-class airstrike. _And_ it boasted a floorplan that wasn’t apparently designed by a voidsent with a spare afternoon and an inclination toward sowing discord, for all that that description did, in fact, quite match the temperament of the Primus Architectus.

Alisaie pyr Leveilleur had been to Meridianum all of twice previously, both times in Livia’s shadow, and even she could find her way from the ætheryte to the Legatus’ office. In buildings of Garlean design which had them at all, ætherytes were always half-forgotten things languishing in whatever obscure wing could spare a broom cupboard, and the Prætorium was no different. But with its comparative ease in navigation, the path to the Legatus’ office was practically a straight line, with maps posted and signs with arrows painted in high-contrast on the walls. On another day traversing the straightforward halls of Castrum Meridianum, Alisaie could wish Livia didn’t get quite so much visceral glee out of inconveniencing people—but then, of course, she wouldn’t have been Livia.

On this particular errand, when she had been summoned by the Legatus for unknown purposes, Alisaie would have welcomed the inconvenience. In Centri, she could have reasonably spent nearly a full bell stomping between wrong office after wrong office and retained plausible deniability. At the Prætorium, she had nothing to focus on but the bloody _maps_.

Any thought beyond her anger was a welcome gift to her composure. Starting an international incident would do no good for anyone, and Alisaie had never been particularly adroit at calming her emotions. Truly, if she got lost it would do the Legatus no harm to have to wait. She set her gaze staunchly at eye level, _her_ eye level and not one ilm above, and should anyone deign to ask after her lateness when there was such clear signage about, she would tell them in earnest she’d seen no such thing.

For her station, Alisaie made perhaps too little secret of her opinions on almost everything that the Garlean Empire had ever done, and today she was even less inclined to be charitable. Still, even _she_ could admit their talent for bureaucracy. She had little enough patience for it, and it had always seemed to her that whoever had designed Garlean administrative practices felt much the same. From the moment she arrived (early, even _trying_ to get lost) at the Legatus’ offices to her admittance it was perhaps all of ten minutes of waiting, spent pacing the small receiving chamber, and at the precise time of the scheduled meeting she was fetched to be escorted to the Legatus himself.

Alisaie pyr Leveilleur had previously met the Legatus of the XIVth on two occasions. The first had been upon her promotion to Optio, when she had been assigned—or requested?—to work directly under his daughter. It had been _mercifully_ brief. The Black Wolf had handed her a folder of paperwork, spared her half a glance, said “She gets impatient with slow learners,” and moved on.

The second time had been… well. Alisaie had _known_ of the relationship between Livia and the Legatus since roughly her second day in the legion. It would be impossible for a soldier not to be confronted with the rumors of it. It was quite another thing to be confronted with the reality, when upon entering Livia’s chambers one evening she had found that the Legatus had beaten her to it. Alisaie had not yet been able to forget the sight of his bare ass—what _precise_ act it had been in the middle of, she had fled before she could register.

That day, she had thrown the door shut behind her and stood for a long moment with her back against it, willing herself to breathe as Livia’s cries of _tata futue_ came muffled from her rooms beyond.

_(This was not Sharlayan.)_

Livia was grown, and under Garlean law her rumored consent, good as confirmed by those gasped orders, were no grounds for an indecency case. Here, she could not be punished for the things her father did to her. Alisaie had reminded herself of this until her breathing slowed and her rage calmed; when she next saw Livia, they were able to speak of other things.

Now, Alisaie pyr Leveilleur stood alone in the Legatus’ office, took a deep breath, and shook out her hands where she had made them into fists. She bit hard into the flesh of her cheek, and was grateful for the taste of blood to cut the bile sitting bitter on the back of her tongue.

Gaius van Bælsar’s musk was, to put it lightly, a _distinct_ odor—one that now pervaded her childhood home in Idyllshire. And for every reason Alisaie had to believe that Livia cherished the Legatus’ bed, she had another to know her brother had not come to it so willing.

The Black Wolf was standing faced away from her, peering at a map on the wall in his full uniform and armor. When the door shut he turned after a moment, hands folded behind his back. He did not sit, so neither did she, standing at parade rest.

“Optio.”

“Legatus, Sir.”

Van Bælsar gestured to the chair beside his desk. He did not say anything, but Alisaie knew an order when she saw it. She took a seat, and wished desperately it was not so tall her feet did not touch the floor. She watched as the Legatus returned to his desk, infuriatingly casual. He flipped through a pile of papers that had been haphazardly tossed there, stacked them more carefully, and slid them into a tray on the desktop. Then, apparently pleased by the cleaning done even though the rest of his desk still looked like his whole legion had blown through it, he sat down, leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared at her.

Alisaie stared back.

They were both wearing helmets. The clock on the wall ticked audibly in the silence.

“Sir?” Alisaie finally spoke, keeping the scowl out of her voice with effort when it was gratefully hidden by her helmet. The Legatus waved two fingers in an acknowledgement for her to continue. “What is this about?” It was rude bordering on insubordinate, and it was the most deference she could muster. She was not her brother; she had not planned her words.

“I am thinking of how best to word it,” the Legatus said. “I have a request.”

Alisaie narrowed her eyes, and with effort kept her voice level. “Surely someone higher ranked would be more appropriate, Sir? My duties as they are keep me quite busy. My mistress,” she dared to add, “is a demanding superior officer.”

“I am afraid you are the only person I can think of capable of this particular task,” he countered, and Alisaie narrowed her eyes further. “I recognize the… nontraditional mein, as it is outside of your duties as Optio, but I would be much obliged to you if you were to extend an invitation to your brother. To meet. With me. I would like to speak with him.”

Alisaie blinked. Of all the requests—after what he had _done!_ If the Legatus dared make such demands, she would have him look at the mirror image of his prey. “Permission to remove my helmet?”

“Do as you wilt.”

Once she had shaken her hair free, Alisaie folded her hands around her helm in her lap, and stared him down with her brother’s eyes.

She could hear him swallow, his teeth click together: his mouthpiece picking up the sound. Were her face not exposed, she would have risked some expression of dark satisfaction. Even with her face neutral, there was an edge to her voice. “May I inquire as to why, Sir?”

To his credit, the Legatus had a gift for bullshit. “To speak frankly with you, Optio, his thoughts on Eorzean politics were… enlightening. I have no wish to return him to my custody, but I find already that I am singularly lacking for conversational partners without his company. I would be much obliged were he interested in even so much as exchanging letters. But, should he be willing to meet—upon neutral ground, of course—I have no few matters I would wish to put to his ear.”

Alisaie took a deep breath, held it in her chest. Pursed her lips. Slowly let it out.

She could smell Alphinaud on him, and the implications of that— _gods_. She hoped against hope, not having seen the back of her brother’s neck for herself, that the man had only not seen fit to bathe.

Something sharp jabbed at the base of Alisaie’s spine, and she was content to continue calling it _rage_. She forced herself to put on her very best smile.

“Sir, forgive me should I sound insubordinate, but you hardly need my permission to pen my brother a letter. Certainly, I can think of no reason a missive from the Legatus of the XIVth to his former prisoner of war—detained through the course of his first heat on no formal charges—might go over poorly among the people of Idyllshire, so very recently in open revolt.”

She could practically hear his awkward shifting. _Good_. Taking a different tack, she gave him a hurt look, worried full-sore over her brother’s misuse—a ruse that was hardly untrue. “Frankly, Sir, having seen the state of him…” Her hips ached from how hard she was tensing. She could feel her temperature rising, her pulse in her ears. “I’m sure I needn’t explain the potential ramifications for securing peace in Sharlayan, should it be found that any men had taken liberties with her foremost insurrectionist.”

His fist clenched at his side. A wave of alpha-scent hit Alisaie like a slap to the face, and she held herself carefully still, pretending she didn’t smell it. She’d never seen an alpha challenge another alpha to a fight in person, but right now, she was near-certain that if someone had been close enough, the Legatus would have started a fight with no-one in particular.

Alisaie was no alpha, and yet found she understood the urge.

“Rest assured, Optio, had any harm come to Alphinaud while he was yet in my custody, I would myself have begged his forgiveness, be it on bended knee or at his feet.” Alisaie felt her eyebrows, without her say-so, climb into her hairline, and bit her tongue back. “He left my care whole and hale, and should he no longer be so—”

“Alphinaud is perfectly well,” Alisaie lied, when the Legatus was so blatantly lying to _her_. If Alphinaud had “left his care”—quite the euphemism for leaving him unannounced at his home under cover of night—so “hale”, he would not be insisting on hiding in his room, convinced by doing so he could prevent their worry. She clenched her jaw, shifted, pressed her thighs together and adjusted so that the pressure on her spine was lessened. She was cold all over and _so angry_ , sweat beading at the back of her neck. “He’s merely,” she hesitated, tried to find the right word; settled on, “adjusting.”

They sat in a shared, tense silence. Alisaie forced herself to breathe deep and even and not shift in her chair even as she felt an increasing need to press her hand between her thighs, to make the chair more comfortable. It was not meant to be comfortable, least of all for someone half the size of a Garlean, unable to even sit back fully.

“Ah,” the Legatus said.

“I will… speak to him,” Alisaie was proud that her voice did not so much as tremble from her rage. “Forgive my curiosity, Sir, but my brother is—” Difficult. An omega who had just been kept in gaol throughout his first heat. An omega who returned from his first heat smelling like the Legatus, and since hadn’t spoken more than insults, even to his sisters. “A seditious public rabble-rouser,” she settled on, true enough even if she said it through gritted teeth. “I am surprised to see you so loyal to him, Sir.”

“He threw a knife at me,” the Legatus said, and he tilted his head, his voice softer than she had ever heard it, in what seemed to her like wonderment.

Alisaie pyr Leveilleur whispered a prayer to the Twelve for patience.

 

 

 

“I’m going to kill him.” Alisaie’s voice was shaking as she paced, agitation in every footfall. “I’m going to _kill_ him.”

Livia wasn’t alarmed. “Which one?”

“Your _father!”_

“He has that effect on people.” Alisaie groaned something unkind. Livia looked up from her reading. “What did he want, anyway?”

It took a long moment for Alisaie to answer, growling—truly _growling_ , as did beasts, winsome little thing—in frustration at finicky straps of her armor as she made to strip it off. Metal clattered to the floor. Then, finally: “He wishes me to speak to my brother.”

“About what?”

Alisaie’s nimble fingers, now free of gloves deposited uncaring on the floor, reached into Livia’s peripheral; plucked the letter opener from atop her desk. “He fucked Alphinaud,” she bit out. Livia had intended to make sure that never came up. “My brother was left upon the stoop in the night, half-dead and _reeking_ of the bastard. They’re—gods, I think they’re  _bonded_.”

Livia was alarmed. She looked up to find Alisaie putting the letter opener’s handle between her teeth, the thin blade pressing sharp into the meat of her cheek and gleaming. Her soft lips were set in a scowl that wrinkled her brow, and she slid her newly freed thumbs into the waistband of her trousers, tugging them off and taking her smallclothes with them. Livia set down her papers. “What are you doing?”

Alisaie did not deign to offer an explanation, and Livia supposed there was little to be said on the matter of what use a sweet-smelling girl drenched in sweat, one who looked as Alisaie did, might have of a blade. Instead, muffled around the knife, Alisaie pressed on, “Did _you_ know about this?”

Livia considered, and elected the middle ground. “Not as such.” Not, at least, in as many words. They’d shared an early breakfast, Gaius stinking of omega heat, of almost-but-not-quite her girl, and with it he had worn no shame. Alisaie’s burning eyes snapped to meet Livia’s own, pupils so dilated it was akin to staring down the Void. “Certainly not what you’ve described.”

Alisaie retrieved the letter opener from her mouth; shoved the handle between her shaking knees. “Livia,” she said, trying for _firm_ and landing on _desperate_ as she pulled her shirt off over her head, let it fall. The lift of her arms tugged at the curve of her bare breasts, making an unbroken line of her form. Sweat beaded in Alisaie’s collarbones, dripped lazy down her sternum, and every gasping breath brought her ribcage shifting under her skin, chiaroscuro in shadows on her flesh. Her hipbones were high arcs beneath the plane of her abdomen, her mons covered by sparse white hair, as fine and soft as that upon her head.

Livia stared, tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Alisaie, her chest heaving, reached behind her head and unpinned her braid; pulled loose the red ribbon at its tail until it came free. “Y-yes?” Her voice sounded to her thick and awkward in her throat. She watched Alisaie’s red ribbon flutter to the floor, entranced. Dumbfounded.

Alisaie pointed the knife at Livia, gaze as lost as Livia felt. Her hand shook. “I,” she said, high and breathless, and swallowed. A thin cut, already clotting, had come up from the corner of her lip, crossing her cheek. “Demand a—a _full_ explanation on your father’s behavior to my brother. Later.”

The moue of Alisaie’s lips pulled at the shallow wound, bringing fresh, bright blood up around the darker clotting. Livia blinked like it might bring her focus; forced her eye to Alisaie’s. She nodded acquiescence, for there could be no arguing with her and neither would Livia wish to.

And then— _then_.

It was an awful thing and wonderous, nearly beyond comprehension. Alisaie reached down between her thighs with shaking fingers; carding through her pubic hair, parting, cradling her clit, pinning it out of the way. Livia knew her mouth was hanging open, her jaw loose in astonishment, but she _could not look away_ from this unholy creature, pungent with fury.

The curve of Alisaie’s wrist as she turned the knife blade-up betwixt her thighs would have broken a man’s resolve; nearly broke Livia’s. The rise and fall of her subtle breasts, the darkness of her wide-blown eyes, the blood on her lip where her teeth tore into the fragile skin: these and more called for worshippers upon their knees. The quiver in her straining thighs moved the soil of the star; her white-knuckled grip upon the hilt—steady now with focus, unshaking—not unlike the glint of muscle between newly-pared flesh. Her single, deep breath was a gunshot in the silence. Livia could taste her own heartbeat, the rapid, terrified scrambling, the agony in the back of her throat as she wanted nothing more than to reach out and _have her_ —

The noise Alisaie made when the blade punctured the skin below her clit, cutting upward with the precision of a peerless swordswoman was what ros marinus would have sounded like; it was of the same texture as the slick slide of bones free from still-living viscera. Her fingers were stained with her blood and steady as any field medic’s as she peeled apart the lips of her sealed cunt, opening the hole of her slit for use.

Livia felt like she was drowning in her omega’s scent, the heady sweet-sick full bloom of it, heat-ready, _use_ -ready. She could not move, could not look away, her breath caught in the back of her throat and holding until her vision was dark at the corners. Alisaie—Alisaie, beautiful, terrible Alisaie, naked before her, Livia’s blade in her hand and _Alisaie’s cunt-blood on her blade_ , as if Livia herself had forced the opening.

Their eyes met, and Alisaie lifted her hand, dripping now with the slick that had been trapped inside her when her heat had begun and blood besides, and wiped the blood from her lip away with it. It left a trail of slick at the corner of her mouth, more blood atop the sharp jut of her chin.

Livia’s nipples ached, her cunt clenching reflexively. Her knot was a hardness so agonizing that had she moved, she would surely have begged Alisaie— _Livia_ , begging, debasing herself on her knees like never before in her life if her girl only would have her, would allow herself to be had _by_ her. Livia found to her own shock that she wanted it—wanted _Alisaie_ —more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. To pierce her, wound her, deflower her, piss in her; to kiss her, mark her, marry her, die by her hand.

When Livia had been eighteen, she had stood guard and watched as her father had bent Solus zos Galvus over his throne, broad hand around his throat, narrow hips pinned by the weight of but one knee, and mounted him like Solus was no better than the beasts of the field. Her love for Gaius had already been a thing of knives and claws, but the moment he bared his teeth and pressed them to the base of Solus’ neck and whispered, the sound carrying in the silent room, that all and sundry knew for what purpose the Emperor had tamed a wolf, and a sire had only need mark a bitch if there was any doubt in who had fathered the whelps, it had become _blinding_.

There had been blood between the Emperor’s thighs, blood that Livia had later licked from the base of her father’s knot when she’d fallen to her knees for him, but there had been none upon his neck.

At that moment, Livia had known that her life would always be measured by a metric of her first and greatest love, in all his awful beauty. The love of him, that terrible, hideous love, was so all-consuming, so enthralling, so peculiarly _singular_ none other had yet had the hope to stand against it—before now, nothing had come even _close_.

But Alisaie naked, dripping in her heat-slick and with her new-cut cunt spread and waiting for Livia’s knot, her own blood on her lips—licking her first slick from the blade, _from Livia’s own blade_ —

Looking upon her, bloodied and needy—desperate for her but girded with fury and uncompromising yet—Livia understood in a single moment the reason that _ōdī et amō_ went hand in hand like lovers.

 

 

 

Abstract for “Twenty Hours: _quem di diligunt adulescens moritur_ ” by Reis Q., reprint from _Representations_ , vol.46, no.3, pp. 370-400:

At first blush the conceit itself sounds impossible: Gaius iyl Bælsar, Princeps Senatus, youngest Garlean Legatus, world-renowned tactician and provincial administrator, a man whose sexual preferences tended towards those few alphas who could dominate him, at the cusp of his sixtieth year standing on the precipice of a decision so momentous it rewrote history. A. aan Leveilleur, an uneducated free peregrinus and grandson of Eorzea’s greatest martyr, unskilled in combat and self-taught in politics, perhaps all of seventeen, arrested for starting a riot, and above all an unpresented omega. Critics of Dadavis Davis’ _Novæ Bonus Res_ have spent thirty years decrying this an absurdist proposition—when presented as a romance, the concept seems like it should be doomed from the start.

“Real history is faker than anything you could ever make up,” said Noéx Rontremont in the introduction to _History Is Made By Stupid People: A Beginner’s Guide To All The Dumb Sh*t Your Teachers Never Told You_. Indeed: unless, as it turns out, you’re Dadavis Davis.

Excerpt, p. 372-376:

Only eight fragments have been positively identified as being from the so-called “lost” journal,[34] only one of which (Vol. I, Frag. III, “Untitled #4”) preserves a complete page. Undated, the obverse is a sketch, while the reverse is an excerpt of a larger journal entry. Of the fragments, “Untitled #4” is the only one that retains any writing of substance.

Fig. 1. _Recto_. Sketch, ink on paper, freehand in teal ink by the same artist as the rest of the journals. A pureblooded Garlean woman in a sleeveless undershirt is shown seated in an armchair, holding an infant. At ¾ view to the artist, the woman is in her late twenties, missing her right eye, her third eye visible. She has shoulder-length hair, curling slightly at the end, which falls around her face. Based on other sketches, this can be positively identified as Livia van Junius. The baby is not clearly visible from the angle of the sketch, wrapped in swaddling and held over the fold of her left elbow. She is bent over the child, and appears to have been captured in the act of speaking to the infant. Based on timeline, the child is likely Gaius van Bælsar (the Younger).

Fig. 2. _Verso_. Excerpt of approximately 300 words, “Untitled #4”:[35]

“Inasmuch as I know that there are any number of [reasons] that R.’s last letter may prove false, I still find myself counting the hours until I can once more hold the wolf by the ears. That but a year could so change my perspective from something so uncharitable seems impossible.

“Those fraught days have been at the forefront of my mind—my own divided [feelings] are I fear complicated overmuch by the fact that our bond [...] untethered and directionless. A. so truly having thought—having [... _(past participle word ending legible)_ ] C. had assaulted me is unsurprising in hindsight, as even h[av]ing lived it I still sometimes struggle to believe it. How se[ns]ible, knowing him—but how little I knew him then!

“I should be angrier at him; I could well have died, all because I wasn’t hungry and he didn’t think to make me eat. But he was as frightened as I: we share the blame equally, falling into heat together simply because we had not known better when the bond was still so nascent; how furious I was at everyone else [...]ing him when had I not asked C. to take me to [..., he?] would certainly not have.

“When I remember A. telling me he threatened to start a fight with whoever had imaginarily harmed me, I can only think of that first night. Sitting there naked and unarmed, literally bleeding into his bedsheets as C. offered to give me my choice of room to lock myself in, that he would stand guard at the door himself rather than allow anyone—himself or otherwise—the chance to take advantage of me.

“Sometimes I long for the storybooks: two people fall in love. Even if their lives are complicated, once in love the complications disappear. They bond and have children. The bond solves every problem, ever, happily ever after, the end.”

It certainly does not seem to be embarrassment that caused A. aan Leveilleur to destroy Vol. I, being as he saved this particular excerpt. The fact that the sketch on the obverse does not fill the page in full means that part of the text was, in fact, the purpose of saving the sheet.

This insight is a rare one, even amongst the full text of the remaining fourteen volumes of the journals (of what has been thus-far translated). When Leveilleur speaks of iyl Bælsar, rarely does he comment in any depth on whatever transpired to begin their relationship.

Retained with “Untitled #4” is the entirety of a letter from Livia van Junius, of whose personal writing scant has survived, and upon whom even Suo sas Antonius—perhaps the least scathing of any early historiographer (and still a sight better than many modern historians)—can hardly be considered an unbiased opinion. Junius’ affair with her father has long been a point of contention among classical scholars, and the debate has been given new life on two separate fronts with the discovery of the Leveilleur journals.

Oddly prescient, her letter (dated authoritatively in the Legatus’ own hand to 22S, 3UM, 32 7UE) has been replicated in full below:[36]

“Alf:

“I am in every way unsurprised to learn C. did this; he did the same to me, you know. For all it was IH[37] that pushed his hand, it was not as if I was _unwilling_. I was insufferable in my youth (even moreso than now) and had I been anything short of enthused I would have told IH to go off and find a fiend to have at him, as you are so fond of saying. I will spare us both the frustration of recounting events: suffice to say, my father’s capitulation was the uphill battle you might expect. Your alpha has ever and always been a man of more honor than sense.

“Perhaps you are the only person in the world equipped to understand the difficulty of explaining to him, in _small words_ , how for as long as I could remember I had wished for nothing but to be his wife. That he would take upon himself the blame for all the world’s sins—even when such crimes are within his mind alone—is one of the many things that makes me wish for the opportunity to bring IH back from the dead for the sole purpose of leading him myself to the slaughter.

“I know not what history will come to think of all of us, these strange lives we lead—all these confusions and complications. I never expected to live long enough to _care_ (do _not_ tell A.). To find myself now doing so is curious indeed, made all the moreso for its futility. History may believe what it likes should it find our voices distasteful; our children, at least, shall find themselves obliged to hear.

“My father is a difficult man to love. He does not make it easy. He never has.

“—L.”

[26] cf. Quiveroix, 284 7AE.  
[27] “In your case, _paîs_ , for the want of a bond, rather than nip at his heels I might suggest to tear out his throat. The man can withstand it.” Addressed to the then-unbonded omega of Gaius iyl Bælsar, 9S 6AM 17 7UE. RWG 436 In8, 3v, trans. U. Oronir.  
[28] This peculiar Allagan loanword typically carries in Garlean the meaning “devoted servant”, but “child” and “slave” lie too within the bounds of its definition.  
[29] In the Garlean, “nōdus” refers to both the bond (socioempathic) and the knot (sexuoanatomical).  
[30] In the Garlean, this word, “flōrē” (the second person present imperative) during the imperial era was used euphemistically—by the younger crowd—of ejaculation.  
[31] The Garlean word here, “vulnērabātur”, is the third person passive imperfect form of “to wound”; it is used euphemistically of taking someone’s virginity.  
[32] The Garlean word here, “agitabat”, is the third person active indicative, and means “to put [an event] in motion”, “to brandish [a weapon]”, or “to conduct [cattle]”.  
[33] Truth is oft stranger than fiction; a “Smallpox (gob)” is a listed denizen of Idyllshire 5–17 7UE. Whether she survived the 4UM Rebellion, however, is lost to time, as her name appears in no later census data. The editors choose to believe she moved with her census-claimed chocobos to Ul’dah.  
[34] The eight extant fragments are all sketches. Two are named (both “Dear Sister”, one showing a miniature scalekin and one of a female wyvern) and the rest untitled, but have been positively identified as: two portraits of Alisaie sas Leveilleur, one of Livia van Junius with the infant Gaius van Bælsar (the Younger), one portrait study of Næl van Darnus (its reference now lost), two studies of Gaius van Bælsar (the Younger), and one half-body nude of Gaius iyl Bælsar.  
[35] Translation taken from Davis, _An Incomplete Translation of The Private Journals into Astral Interlingua_.  
[36] Ibid.  
[37] “Ipse homo”, of Solus zos Galvus.

**Author's Note:**

> > have you all read this. A.P.
> 
> > [link] A.P.  
>  **Abstract for _Dearest Sister: “Pet” Name_ by Thomas Gunner:**
>
>> Despite appearing eleven times in A. aan Leveilleur’s journals, only six of the attested uses of “Dear Sister” are referencing Alisaie with any certainty. With the discovery of the “Dear Sister” sketches in the Private Journals, the historical record is finally clear that A. aan Leveilleur’s “other” sister was either a particularly silly nickname for either a scalekin pet or of a local Dravanian with whom the Leveilleurs were close.
> 
> > weird flex but ok -d  
> \- sent from my iTome
> 
> > i looked it up on academia.hyd and he’s done another draft of it and added “or a particularly lost raen” to his abstract. hello new cheeper display name. thats dr. particularly lost raen to you. ᠠ
> 
> > you are certainly lost. a pox upon whoever told you our collection was mountainous. A.P. 
> 
> > :/ ᠠ 
> 
> > wife says: finally solved the mystery of “shitty_history_mods” true identity 😂😂😂 -d  
> \- sent from my iTome
> 
> > ita vero. A.P.
> 
> > don’t tell me allagan aula’s tomemail marked us as spam again. A.P.
> 
> > no. -α


End file.
